Nicaraguan women

Active Citizens, Civil Society, Cooperatives, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors' Choice, Environment, Featured, Food & Agriculture, Gender, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs, Projects, Terra Viva United Nations, Women & Economy Members of a cooperative of women farmers in Nicaragua build a greenhouse for thousands of seedlings of fruit and lumber trees aimed at helping to fight the effects of climate change in a village in the department of Madriz.Credit: Femuprocan- A group of women farmers who organised to fight a centuries-old monopoly over land ownership by men are seeking plots of land to farm in order to contribute to the food security of their families and of the population at large.For a Nicaraguan woman, having a child elevates her status from being a girl, to being a mother.She socially gains more respect, more power, and more independence.However, sociologist Cirilo Otero, director of the non-governmental Centre of Initiatives for Environmental Policies, said there is not enough government support, and stressed to IPS that women’s lack of access to land is one of the most serious problems of gender inequality in Nicaragua.“It is still an outstanding debt by the state towards women farmers,” he said. agency, between 19, the country reduced the proportion of undernourished people from 54.4 per cent to 16.6 per cent.Nevertheless, data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicates that Nicaragua was one of 17 Latin American countries that met the targets for hunger reduction and improvement in food security in the first 15 years of the century, as part of the Millennium Development Goals. It is a cultural phenomenon here and it is uncommon for women above the age of 25 not to have a child.Children are cherished in Nicaragua, as are their mothers.

Josefina Rodríguez, one of the 18 per cent of women farmers in Nicaragua who own the land that they work.But this fund has not yet been included in the general budget in order for women to access mortgage credits administered by the state bank, to get their own land,” Fernández complained in May.The Nicaraguan financial system does not grant loans to women farmers who have no legal title to land, a problem that the government has tried to mitigate with social welfare programmes such as Zero Hunger, Zero Usury, Roof Plan, Healthy Yards and the Christian Solidarity Programme for food distribution, among others.The law was aimed at giving rural women access to physical possession and legal ownership of land, improving their economic conditions, boosting gender equity, ensuring food security and fighting poverty in the country, estimated at the time at 47 per cent.Nicaragua currently has a population of 6.2 million, 51 per cent of whom are women, and 41 per cent of whom live in rural areas, according to World Bank figures.